


Not Alone

by LibraryMage



Series: Let's Go Steal A Family [1]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Gen, autistic characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 19:05:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14837441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibraryMage/pseuds/LibraryMage
Summary: "These people you hired, they all have the same rep.  They work alone."Hardison, Parker, and Eliot worked alone.  Nate was never alone, right up until he was.  Sophie was somewhere in between.  None of them ever expected they'd actually want to work together.





	Not Alone

**Author's Note:**

> warning for: references to child abuse and child death

_ Anybody else notice how hard we rocked last night? _

Hardison worked alone.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like other people, but you didn’t need a partner or a team to do what he did.  His work took skills not everyone had, and the number of people who could pull off his jobs dropped significantly the more secure the systems he attacked were.

When he wasn’t disappearing for jobs like this, he worked from behind a closed bedroom door at Nana’s house, with her and whichever other kids were living with them right on the other side.  Their voices would come through the door, sometimes too loudly and too many at once, but always  _ there _ .  When Hardison was done with whatever task he’d set out to complete, he could step out of the room and go downstairs and help Nana with the dishes, and she’d pretend she had no idea what her grandson had been doing that made him miss dinner.

He’d never existed alone, but he sure as hell worked that way.

Or he had, until Nathan Ford had walked into his life.

Sure, Dubenich had been the one who’d hired him and Eliot and Parker -- why the hell he’d hired  _ three _ kids was beyond Hardison -- but if it hadn’t been for Nate, they would have scattered to the winds, never to see each other again.  Instead, they’d stuck around on the word of some guy who’d chased each of them at one point or another, because he offered them a chance at payback.  And damn if it wasn’t some of the most glorious payback Hardison had ever seen.

If  _ that _ was what working with this team would be like, maybe it would actually be nice not working alone for a change.

But it wasn’t just about payback or watching some corrupt corporate giant’s life go down in flames.  Hardison’s career as a hacker had begun mostly out of curiosity and boredom. He’d wanted to see what he could do and keep pushing the limits as far as he could go without getting caught.  He’d honed his skills, almost entirely self-taught, until now at age 15, he was practically a legend. But his attacks on banks, his credit card scams, all of those had begun as a way to help.  Help Nana pay the mortgage or medical bills, help a foster brother get his mom into drug rehab, help pay a friend’s legal fees as she sued the adoption agency that had knowingly placed her with parents who shouldn’t have been allowed within 100 yards of kids.

Of course Hardison did some things just for himself.  Most people did and everyone should. And to preserve his reputation, he never would have admitted it to anyone except his new team, but he  _ liked _ using his skills to help people.  What was the point in doing something this fun if he was the only one who got to enjoy it?

* * *

 

_ I don’t trust these guys. _

Parker worked alone.

Alone was better.  Alone was more comfortable.  Alone was  _ safe _ .  Alone meant away from people.  People couldn’t be trusted, as she’d learned the hard way over and over and over again until the lesson finally stuck.  People were too scary and too complicated and  _ too much _ and she wasn’t built to be around them.

Working alone, it was just Parker and the problem in front of her.  There was nothing she had to fake, no one she had to work to impress.  People seemed to think being alone was a sad way to be, but for Parker, it was freedom and safety.

She hadn’t always worked alone.  Archie used to keep her on a short leash before he decided she was ready to be let off it.  And after working with him, Parker wasn’t eager for a repeat. Working alone was better.

Then Victor Dubenich showed up with an offer of 300 grand.  Dealing with three other people for an hour at most seemed like a decent trade-off for a score that good.  And then he tried to kill her, and Nate had offered her a shot at revenge.

What Nate did at the hospital didn’t mean he’d proven himself.  People always did things at first to get you to trust them before they turned on you, even so-called “honest” people.  And Parker didn’t have any reason to think Nate would be any different.  And then he was.

At the end of the job, he’d been ready to walk away.  He’d gotten them all through it, alive and unscathed and without the cops on their tail.  He had never once considered cutting them loose in the middle of the job and saving his own skin.  And then they were all ready for a clean break.  It was supposed to be over.

And yet somehow, for some fucking reason, Parker had found herself rushing to catch up to the boys as they clustered around Nate, urging him to help them pull another job.  To help  _ all _ of them pull another job, together.

When they finally scattered, it was with each other’s phone numbers programmed into their phones and the knowledge that sooner or later, they’d get a call telling them where to meet for their next job as a team.  Parker skimmed over the names in her contacts again and again, surprised to realize she didn’t want to delete them, to block their numbers, to forget about Nate and Sophie and Eliot and Hardison and move on with her life.  Surprised to realize she actually wanted this.

She  _ wanted _ to be part of this team.

* * *

 

_ This was supposed to be a walk-away. _

Eliot worked alone.

Even under Moreau’s employ, he’d operated best on his own, and as long as he got the job done, Moreau didn’t have a problem with it.  Since getting away from Moreau, Eliot had developed a distaste for teamwork. He  _ could _ work with other people, but only when he knew it wasn’t likely he’d ever work with them again.  He wasn’t about to let anyone draw him in like that again.

Working with other people carried too many risks and variables.  He could never know just how good or professional any other person was or how much he could actually trust them, and for too many people, the answers to those questions came far too late.

After seeing Nate, Hardison, and Parker in action, Eliot didn’t doubt their skills, and once the job was done, trust wasn’t something that really mattered anymore, at least not until he woke up the next morning to find he’d been screwed out of his payment.  It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened, and it could usually be solved with a few well-placed punches and a threat. This time it was different. This time they’d all been screwed over and they all had to deal with it together.

He knew Nate didn’t buy it when he’d tried to play off his desire to stick around as concern for Nate’s mental state.  Luckily, Nate just blew him off instead of challenging him on it, because Eliot didn’t have a better excuse. He knew Nate wasn’t another Moreau, but he was exactly the type of person Eliot shouldn’t want to get involved with.

But here he was, ready to throw in not only with Nathan Ford, but with three other strangers.  He still wasn’t completely sold on the idea, and part of him thought maybe when the call came, he just wouldn’t answer the phone.  A much louder and more insistent part told him of course he would. Someone had to watch their backs, after all.

* * *

 

_ You’re playing my side? _

Sophie often worked alone.

For all the complex tricks and traps she employed, Sophie’s M.O. was simple.  She found her mark, she drew them in, she took their money or their art, and she vanished.  It was a game of subtlety and manipulation and carefully moving people just where she wanted them, and it was a game better played alone.  Another player meant another person whose actions and anxieties and guilty consciences she couldn’t always account for and might not be able to get under her control until it was too late.

Occasionally she would work with another person, never more than one, who she either needed in order to make sure the con worked, or who she knew she could at least trust on a professional level, if not a personal one.  But those partnerships almost always ended shortly after the con did.  Some she stayed in touch with, but she rarely worked with them again.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like other people.  She loved them in all their complexities and nuances and flaws both beautiful and exploitable.  But during a job, her efforts had to be focused on the mark, not on whether her partner was getting twitchy.

But when Nate had approached her, she couldn’t say no.

The last thing Sophie had been expecting had been running into Nate in that alley.  When she saw him, she just knew. This wasn’t like all the other times he’d tracked her down.  He wasn’t trying to catch her in the act of committing a crime; he was there for her help. He was playing her side.  She wasn’t about to miss this for anything.

* * *

 

_ My job is helping people.  I find bad guys. _

Nate had never worked alone, but now he was stuck that way.

After he’d lost Sam, everything else had followed.  Maggie, his partner in work and in life, was gone.  His work that had given him focus and purpose before his family was gone.  Nate was alone in a way he never had been before.

When Dubenich had approached him, Nate had figured it was a one-time gig.  He needed the money and all he had to do was make sure the others who’d been hired didn’t go off-book.  When he’d seen the names of the other three people Dubenich had brought in, Nate couldn’t help but feel like he  _ had _ to take the job.  They were kids; all of them.  Eliot Spencer, age seventeen, Alec Hardison, fifteen, and Parker, whose age no one but her was really sure of, but who was definitely nowhere near adulthood yet.  They shouldn't be doing this on their own.

“Thieves I’ve got,” Dubenich had said.  “What I need is one honest man to watch them.”

_ One honest man, _ Nate had thought,  _ more like one legal adult. _

For a group of teenagers, they weren’t bad.  They knew what they were doing, as Nate knew from his years chasing down all three of them and never managing to catch them.  None of them were what he’d call team players, but they  _ were _ professionals, and they managed to hold it together when plan changed.

When everything had gone to hell, they’d kept holding it together and they all went along with the plan.  When they’d taken down Dubenich, that should have been the end of it. They would go their separate ways, a clean, professional split.  They would go back to being thieves and Nate would go back to being…nothing.  An empty shell.  A vague echo of whoever he used to be.

At least, that’s what was supposed to happen.  Instead, he’d found himself agreeing to an idea so crazy it just might be a good one.  Sophie was right.  Bad guys did have money.  Money that usually belonged to people they’d hurt to get it.  He’d taken the job from Dubenich for a chance to hurt IYS, and he knew his family was far from the only one they’d screwed over.  His son wasn’t the only person they’d killed.  One day he’d get a clear shot at them, but in the meantime, they weren’t the only company that had hurt and killed people in the name of profit.

This might just work out after all.


End file.
